this daylight-savings thing is a pain in the arse, was it 8, 9 or 10.. my alarm had gone off and if it was 10 I was already late, Telecom hadn’t updated my phone so I called up and it switched over for me.. it was 9:15 and all I had to do was get ready and head to collect my navigator.. I had spent some time yesterday cleaning the inside of the family car to ensure she at least looked tip top at a cursory glance and when you have someone riding shotgun you can’t have a messy car, it’s just not cricket.. I collected the navigator and we were away to participate in our first mystery cruise..

meeting place was the Contact Call centre car park opposite Burger Fuel so we gassed up with some 98 at BP Melling and parked up alongside a mean as Galaxie coupe painted in lime green with 390 blackouts on the flanks and a backseat full of what looked to be Stafforshire bull terriers.. personal car security at it’s finest (and cutest according to the navigator).. after paying our entry fee and donating some cans of pet food we were given our first questionnaire.. the navigator had a fit and thought I had conned her into something.. I was having a good chuckle cos I thought it looked like fun but you’d be sure to have a crash if you tried to complete the list solo.. as it was this was our first mystery cruise and aside from the Port Rd drags it was the first time I had done anything with the guys from Cam County Inc.

There were a couple of familiar faces in the car park when I arrived, my regular cruise and drag race cohort Mike Henderson in his dark blue AMG V8 Merc coupe, and Paul De Kort from Firestone Wainui in his silver BF FPV GT-P, dunno about you but I always feel a little more relaxed when there are familiar faces at an unfamilar event.. I soon noticed plenty of familiar cars and faces from Masterton Motorplex, from Port Rd and from cruising the streets of Wellington on a Friday night.. I had paid our registration fee, my navigator felt confident enough we were going to get lost after reading through the questions and so I went and perved at the cars and had a chat to some of their drivers’.. Some neat cars had shown up, across the full spectrum of modified vehicles from the 30s Hot Rod through to the naughties GT-P, rods to customs, Yank, Aussie and Euro  were all represented and they all looked the part.. Pete Meo’s 58 Belair was looking sharp and the green Chevelle we seemed to follow for a while looked tough.. there were some nice Fairlanes and more than one blue Mustang as well as a few pick-up trucks and the black Brougham with the new customised shotgun scoop tricked up by Ray from Rays Signs here in Wainuiomata, yeah that’s right!!

the word was given: hit the road anytime after 11.

I returned to the family car and settled into the Racetech, a few quiet words with the navigator and we were the first to head off to wherever the clues would take us.. the Mystery Run questions were like a rally map you needed to be a few questions ahead of wherever you were on the road and and we seemed to fare pretty well from that perspective.. our Rooster Sandwich route took us up to the Silverstream tip (we never did figure out what was missing??) then to the Haywards hill where we headed for Greys Rd and a mid-run snack stop and yack.. the snags and onions were primo, and it is always good to catch up with a few celebrities and check out the cars as they arrive, oh and excellent work on securing the tent too guys.. Counting all the orange markers as we headed for Mana we hit the motorway and made a B-line for Denny’s (which gives you a free beer with any burger AND has been there since 2005) before we got a little muddled in the city-of-churches, the beautiful Adelaide of the North Island that is Tawa. We found our lunch price, got our Rooster Sandwich and made it through to Ngauranga where we found flying toast and a police car. The return trip through the Lower Hutt area and down the street of speed humps, Bell rd, was entertaining and when we made it back to the Cam County Inc clubrooms the members were already hard at work socialising and relaxing with pics of the cruise up on the screen and the ladies on-hand to work the bar and cafe. Cheers ladies.

I had a look around the clubrooms and checked out the Port Rd and Horticultural Hall Show memorabilia as well as the club trophy cabinet, surely deserving of a pool room of it’s own. the Cam County Inc clubrooms are a blast from the past and I enjoyed being there for a chat with some owners, for the fun of being part of a driver/navigator team and for a perve at the cars with a friend or two. Thanks so much to the guys and dolls at Cam County Inc for putting on the SPCA Charity Cruise, we really had a great time and spent a fair bit of time laughing at each other laughing at the questions we had missed because we were too focussed on the preceding questions.. we really enjoyed the sights of rods and streeters, old and new, cruising and sharing the same space of road, it is just so cool.. and we’d be keen to do it again..

*** I’ve asked the guys at Cam County Inc. if they have any pics I can use to put up for this blog entry as I forgot to take the camera and so I’ll add a couple of pics when the opportunity arises ***